THE 



ATIONAL MEDALS 



OF THE 



UNITED STATES 




A Paper read before the Maryland Historical Society, 

March 14, 188-7, 

ay, 
RICHARD M. McS r lERRY, 

Of the Baltimoke Bar. 



Jalfimorc, 1887 



THE 



NATIONAL MEDALS 



OF THE 



UNITED STATES 



^UTTD-'llPubHcattort, QTTo* %5. 



THE 



NATIONAL MEDALS 



or THE 



UNITED STATES 




«IM*. 







A Paper read before the Maryland Historical Society, 

March 14, 1887, 
BY 

RICHARD M. McSHERRY, 

Of the Baltimore Bar. 



Jalitmort, 1887. 






PEABODY PUBLICATION FUND. 



Committee on Publication. 

1886-87. 

HENRY STOCKBRIDGE, 
JOHN W. M. LEE, 
BRADLEY T. JOHNSON. 



Printed by John Murphy & Co. 

Printers to the Maryland Historical Society. 

Baltimore, 1887. 



v«~ 



THE NATIONAL MEDALS 

OF THE 

UNITED STATES. 



SO far as authentic history goes, the great deeds 
of men have been commemorated in some 
conspicuous form, not only as a just recom- 
pense for well accomplished duty, but as an incen- 
tive to future generations to emulate the public 
virtue of the hero. 

As the Prince Ozias said to Judith, " He has so 
magnified thy name this day that thy praise shall 
not depart out of the mouth of men." 

And beyond authentic history in that semi-twi- 
light now being pierced by the keen eye of science, 
Egyptian papyri, immemorial stones carved with 
Assyrian and Persian cuneiform, with Scandina- 
vian and Teutonic Runes, or with Aztec hiero- 
glyphs, all give us in picture or in prose the story 
of the public triumph. 

2 5 



6 



But the natural fitness of things requires that 
public reward for public services should be ex- 
pressed not only in a conspicuous, but also in an 
enduring form, and so all the resources of art and 
labor and treasure have in each succeeding age 
been utilized and exhausted, to produce gorgeous 
edifices, temples and monuments to signalize the 
victories of the great captains and the reigns of 
the great kings and princes of the earth. 

Many of these great monuments of the past do 
survive, such as the Pyramids, and the later edi- 
fices of Greece and Rome, and to an extent we 
know their meaning and the name of the person 
in whose honor they were built. But who shall 
tell us of the number that have fallen into ruin 
and disappeared, as the men whose names they 
w^ere built to perpetuate have disappeared and 
been forgotten. 

And of those that exist which one tells us that 
which any coin dug from the old soil of the Troad 
will tell us ; the name, the date, the very features 
of the man in wiiose honor it was struck. 

The two largest and most imposing monuments 
on the Appian way, near Rome, are circular edi- 
fices, one of which is so large that there is a house 
and farm buildings and an olive grove upon its 
summit, and no man knows in whose honor it was 
built. The other, which is somewhat smaller, tra- 
dition calls the tomb of Cecilia Metella, but tradi- 



tion cannot tell us who was Cecilia, nor why this 
sumptuous pile was erected to her memory and 
the tomb itself is silent. 

But medals, as memorials, are not silent. In a 
vear, or a hundred years, or a thousand years, or 
ten thousand years, after the man has played his 
part, this little metal disk is a witness who shall 
tell him who reads, the name of the man and the 
deed he did, and the time and the country, and 
show his yery features "in his habit as he lived." 

Much as we are indebted to ancient coins for 
exact and concise historical information, it would 
appear that what we call a medal was practically 
unknown to antiquity, which only struck pieces 
destined for circulation and exchange as money. 
The ancient engravers in the types of current 
money infinitely varied, endeayored to multiply 
and disseminate religious and historical ideas, but 
these were technically coins not medals. 

The exact definition of a medal according to the 
science of numismatics is, " A piece of metal in the 
form of a coin not issued or circulated as money, 
but stamped with a figure or deyice to preserye the 
portrait of some eminent person or the memory of 
some illustrious action or event." 

It may be fairly said that we owe the medal, 
according to this definition, to that period to which 
all arts are so much indebted. I mean the Italian 
Renaissance of the fifteenth century, which broke 



8 



the old mould that imprisoned art in conventional 
forms and brought her back to her mother nature. 

Vittorio Pisano or Pisanello was indeed the 
creator of the medal proper. He was a portrait 
painter of Verona, and the first technical medal 
was designed by him in honor of John Paleologos, 
next to the last Greek emperor of Constantinople. 
This potentate, who wears in the medal a very 
remarkable headdress copied from life, was at the 
time, 1439, attending the great Oecumenical Coun- 
cil held at Ferrara and Florence, consulting about 
the union of the Greek and Latin churches, and 
had this medal struck in honor of his visit. 

So accomplished an artist was Pisano, that a very 
late work on numismatics says that, " He marked 
the limits of the art to which he gave birth, and his 
successors have made variations on his style but 
not improvements." 

From his time onward Italy has been distin- 
guished in this beautiful art — the long list of its 
masters, either as designers, engravers or both, 
including such great names as Raffaele and Bene- 
venuto Cellini. 

France followed quickly in the footsteps of Italy, 
and a very beautiful medal was struck in 1451 to 
commemorate the taking of Bordeaux and the final 
expulsion of the English from France. Other 
nations followed in the wake and adopted the idea, 
so that every civilized country soon had issued 



9 



national medals of more or less importance and 
artistic merit. 

" When in the course of human events it became 
necessary for this people to assume among the 
powers of the world the separate and equal station 
to which the laws of Nature and of Nature's God 
entitled them," the Continental Congress was met 
at the outset with the question as to how the new 
republic should honor its heroes. It could not give 
them titles and peerages, but it could give them, as 
General Scott once expressed it, "the highest 
reward a free man can receive — the recorded appro- 
bation of Ms country." Nay, even before the tre- 
mendous declaration of the 4th July, 1776, the 
Congress had decided the point, for on the 26th 
March, 1776, it was 

" Resolved, that the thanks of this Congress in their own 
name and in the name of the thirteen united colonies whom 
they represent be presented to His Excellency General Wash- 
ington, and the officers and soldiers under his command for 
their wise and spirited conduct in the siege and acquisition of 
Boston ; and that a medal of gold be struck in commemora- 
tion of this great event, and presented to His Excellency, and 
that a committee of three be appointed to prepare a letter of 
thanks and a proper device for the medal." 

Messrs. Jno. Adams, Jno. Jay and Hopkins, 
were the committee so appointed, and here over 
three months before the Declaration of Independ- 
ence begins the story of 



10 



The National Medals of the United States. 

The letter of John Hancock, President of Con- 
gress to General Washington, informing him of 
this resolution, may well be taken as the best 
expression of the meaning and extent of the honor 
conferred on an American citizen by an act of Con- 
gress presenting him with a medal. 

"Philadelphia, 2cZ April, 1776. 
" To General Washington. 

"Sir: It gives me the most sensible pleasure to convey to 
you by order of Congress the only tribute which a free people 
will ever consent to pay — the tribute of thanks and gratitude to 
their friends and benefactors. The disinterested and patriotic 
principles which led you to the field have also led you to 
glory; and it affords no little consolation to your countrymen 
to reflect that as a peculiar greatness of mind induced you to 
decline any compensation for serving them except the pleasure 
of promoting their happiness, they may without your permis- 
sion bestow upon you the largest share of their affection and 
esteem. 

" Those pages in the annals of America will record your 
title to a conspicuous place in the temple of fame, which shall 
inform posterity that under your direction an undisciplined 
band of husbandmen, in the course of a few months became 
soldiers ; and that the desolation meditated against the country 
by a brave army of veterans, commanded by the most experi- 
enced generals, but employed by bad men in the worst of 
causes, was, by the fortitude of your troops and the address of 
their officers next to the kind interposition of Providence, con- 



11 



fined for near a year within such narrow limits as scarcely to 
admit more room than was necessary for the encampments and 
fortifications they lately abandoned. Accept, therefore, Sir, the 
thanks of the United colonies unanimously declared by their 
delegates to be due to you and the brave officers and troops 
under your command, and be pleased to communicate to them 
this distinguished mark of the approbation of their country. 
The Congress have ordered a golden medal adapted to the 
occasion to be struck and when finished to be presented to you. 
" I have the honor to be with every sentiment of esteem, 
Sir, your most obedient and very humble servant, 

"John Hancock, 

" PreddenV 

No country in the world has been as chary of 
granting this sort of public recognition to its citi- 
zens as the United States. From the beginning 
of our national history to this, the 112th year of 
the republic, only eighty-three medals have been 
granted by Congress, so that of all governmental 
honors known to the world to-day, it is the rarest. 

It is interesting to recall the various opinions 
and suggestions made by the great men of that 
time in treating of this subject. 

The United States Mint was not established 
until 1792, and previous to that time the revolu- 
tionary medals were struck in France generally 
under the direction of the American minister near 
that court. And it happened that there was in 
Paris at that time a brilliant group of engravers 



12 



who have given us in all of these medals noble 
specimens of their beautiful art. 

It appears that the first medal actually struck 
was that of Lieutenant-Colonel de Fleury, which 
was executed under the direction of Dr. Franklin 
about 1780. 

The doctor shows his practical mind in a sugges- 
tion which he makes in a letter to Mr. Jay, the 
then Secretary of State, he says : 

" The man who is honored only by a single medal is obliged 
to show it to enjoy the honor which can be done only to a few 
and often awkwardly. I, therefore, wish the medals of Con- 
gress were ordered to be money, and so continued as to be con- 
venient money by being in value aliquot parts of a dollar." 

Our government has never quite adopted that 
idea (which was exactly the practice of the coiners 
of antiquity), but it has come tolerably near it by 
placing upon every revenue and postage stamp and 
bank note the portrait of some of our public men. 

In 1792 the Senate passed a bill for coining- 
money with the head of the President upon it, 
but General Washington himself opposed it, and 
the House of Eepresentatives amended the bill by 
substituting the head of Liberty, the mother or per- 
haps grandmother of the classic female who now 
figures on that coin which is by law worth 100 
cents, and of which we all try to be collectors. 

Colonel Humphreys, who was entrusted by Mr. 



13 



Morris with the commission of procuring the other 
medals which had been voted, immediately upon 
his arrival in Paris addressed himself to the French 
Royal Academy of Inscriptions and Belles Lettres, 
asking them to aid him " in having these medals 
executed in a manner grateful to the illustrious 
personages for whom they are designed, worthy 
the dignity of the sovereign power by whom they 
are presented, and calculated to perpetuate the 
remembrance of those great events which they are 
intended to consecrate to immortality." 

The Academy took a most active interest in the 
work and immediately appointed a committee of 
four of its members to suo-o-est the designs. 

Colonel Humphreys returned to America, leav- 
ing the superintendence of the medals to Mr. 
Jefferson, who in writing about them to Mr. 
John Jay, the then Secretary of State, made some 
sim-o-estions which are thus commented on by Mr. 
Jay in his report to Congress, dated 11th July, 
1787. After reciting Mr. Jefferson's suggestions, 
he says : 

" In the judgment of your Secretary it would be proper to 
instruct Mr. Jefferson to present in the name of the United 
States one silver medal of each denomination to every mon- 
arch (except the King of England for that would not be deli- 
cate) ; and to every sovereign and independent State without 
exception in Europe, and also to the Emperor of Morocco. 
That he also be instructed to send fifteen silver medals of each 

3 



14 



set to Congress to be by thern presented to the thirteen United 
States respectively, and also to the Emperor of China with 
an explanation and a letter, and one to General Washington. 
That he also be instructed to present a copper medal of each 
denomination to each of the most distinguished Universities 
(except the British) in Europe, and also to Cte de Rocham- 
beau, Cte d'Estaing and Cte de Grasse, and lastly that he be 
instructed to send to Congress two hundred copper ones of 
each set together with the dies. 

" Your Secretary thinks that of these it would be proper 
to present one to each of the American colleges, one to the 
Marquis de la Fayette, and one to each of the other Major- 
Generals who served in the late American army, and that the 
residue with the dies be deposited in the Secretary's office of 
the United States subject to such future order as Congress 
may think proper to make respecting them. 

" It might be more magnificent to give gold medals to 
sovereigns, silver ones to distinguished persons and copper 
ones to the colleges, but in his opinion the nature of the 
American government as well as the state of their finance 
will apologize for their declining this expense. All of which 
is submitted to the wisdom of Congress. 

"J*ro. Jay." 

Congress does not seem to have adopted Mr. 
Jay's report, at any rate the proposed action has 
never been taken. But it would appear that Mr. 
Jefferson fully expected that his suggestion would 
be carried out, as we find him under date of 23rd 
February, 1789, writing to Mr. Dupre, the en- 
graver, asking him for a copy of Dr. Franklin's 



15 



medal, as he is going to have a description of 
all the medals printed in order to send them 
with copies of the medals to the sovereigns of 
Europe. 

It is no doubt owing to the fact that the pro- 
posed copies of the medals were never struck, that 
the Bibliography of American National Medals 
did not begin with Mr. Jefferson's description of 
those given for the Revolutionary battles. 

The first work on this especial subject known 
to the writer of this paper was published in 1848, 
by Carey & Hart, Philadelphia, and is called 
"Memoirs of the Generals, Commodores and other 
Commanders who were presented with medals by 
Congress, by Thomas Wyatt. 

The writer's attention was called to this work 
by Mr. W. Elliot Woodward of Roxbury, Mass., a 
name well known to all American numismatists. 
The only accessible copy was found in the Boston 
public library, and up to its date it is a com- 
plete work giving an engraving of the medals 
issued up to that time with a memoir of each 
of the recipients. 

Mr. Wyatt seems to have been the first person 
to collect a full set of our medals, and in a letter 
from him to Mr. Woodward in 1861, he speaks of 
the great difficulties he had in searching out and 
borrowing every medal of the series. For the 
medals of Major Lee and Major Stewart he was 



16 



obliged to go to France. He had a number of sets 
struck off for sale at the request, and partly at the 
expense, of Jared Sparks, Abbott Lawrence, Daniel 
Webster and other gentlemen interested in the 
project, and he says that the Legislatures of Maine, 
New Hampshire, New York, Virginia and Penn- 
sylvania ordered each a set for the public libraries, 
with a vote of thanks for his perseverance. 

In 1861 Mr. James Ross Snowden, Director of 
the Mint, published a volume called the " Medallic 
Memorials of Washington." Philadelphia, J. B. 
Lippincott & Co. — an interesting and valuable 
work. 

Tn 1878 Mr. J. F. Loubat, of New York, pub- 
lished his " Medallic History of the United States 
of America." This magnificent and exhaustive 
work has become an absolute authoritv on the sub- 
ject. All that learning and conscientious and 
intelligent research can do, has been done to make 
it perfect, and the writer of this paper cheerfully 
acknowledges his indebtedness to it for most of the 
facts herein given. The work being, however, only 
published as an " edition de luxe," in two large 
quarto volumes, printed on especially prepared 
paper and enriched with 170 etchings of the 
medals by M. Jules Jacquemart, it is necessarily 
too expensive a book for general circulation and 
is, therefore, perhaps not as well known as it 
ought to be. 



17 



Mr. Loubat gives descriptions of eighty-six 
medals which he classifies as national, although 
seven of them have not the sanction of a Conores- 
sional vote. 

The first, or Revolutionary group, is composed 
of the following : 

1. General Washington, for the occupation of 
Boston, by Duvivier. 

2. Major-General Gates, for the surrender at 
Saratoga, by Gatteaux. 

3. General Wayne, for Stony Point, by Gat- 
teaux. 

4. Major John Stewart, commanding the left 
wing storming party same action, by Gatteaux. 

f). Lieutenant- Colonel de Fleury, commanding 
the right wing storming party same action, by 
Duvivier. 

6. Major Henry Lee, for surprise of Paulus 
Hook, by J. Wright. 

This was the famous " Light Horse Harry " — the 
worthy sire of his noble son, General R. E. Lee. 

7. John Paulding, David Williams and Isaac 
Van Wart, for the capture of Major Andre. 

This is not a medal proper, but a piece of 
repousse work made by a silversmith. 

8. General Morgan, for the victory of the Cow- 
pens, by Dupre. 

9. Lieutenant-Colonel William A. Washington, 
same action, bv Duvivier. 



18 



10. Lieutenant-Colonel John Eager Howard, 
same action, by Duvivier. 

11. Major-General Nathaniel Greene, for victory 
at Eutaw Springs, by Dupre. 

This completes the list of medals given to the 
army during the Revolution. Two of the reci- 
pients were Marylanders. The first, Major John 
Stewart, was a son of Stephen Stewart, a merchant 
of Baltimore. He commanded the left storming 
party at Stony Point, which, in the words of Gen- 
eral Wayne's official report, " with unloaded mus- 
kets and strict orders not to fire, in the face of a 
most incessant and tremendous fire of musketry 
and from cannon loaded with grapeshot, forced 
their way, at the point of the bayonet, through 
every obstacle." 

In this same report Mr. Archer is commended for 
gallantry, and was in consequence brevetted cap- 
tain by order of Congress, which looks as though 
Harford County had a representative in that 
action. 

Colonel Stewart was a first lieutenant in 1776, 
captain in 1777, served through the war with great 
distinction, and commanded a regiment in the 
Southern campaign. He went to South Carolina 
directly after the war and died there in 1783, and 
so was comparatively little known in Maryland 
outside of his own kinsmen. Of the other Mary- 
lander — Colonel John Eager Howard — nothing 



19 



need be said here ; his life is a part of the history 
of this city and known to us all. 

The Maryland bayonet was as effective under 
Colonel Howard in South Carolina as it had been 
under Colonel Stewart on the Hudson, as will 
appear from these words taken from General 
Morgan's official report of the action at the Cow- 
pens: "Lieutenant-Colonel Howard observing this, 
gave orders for the line to charge bayonets, which 
was done with such address that they fled with the 
utmost precipitation, leaving their field pieces in 
our possession. We pushed our advantage so 
effectually that they never had an opportunity of 
rallying, had their intentions been ever so good." 

It is a matter of history that the gallant Colonel, 
during the battle of the Cowpens, held in his 
hands at one time the swords of seven British 
officers who had surrendered to him. 

But one medal was given during the Revolution 
to the young American navy — that of 

12. Captain John Paul Jones for his various 
naval exploits, particularly the capture of the 
British frigate Serapis off the coast of Scotland. 

This great naval commander hoisted with his 
own hands the first American naval flag on board 
the Alfred on October 10, 1776, at Chestnut Street 
Wharf, Philadelphia. He was the only American 
officer decorated by the King of France, and has 
the unique distinction of being the only American 



20 



citizen whose title of knight (chevalier), conveyed 
by the decoration, has been officially recognized by 
the United States Congress. 

This medal is by Dupre, and, with the exception 
of the medal of Major Henry Lee, which is by 
Joseph Wright, the first draughtsman and die 
sinker of the United States Mint, and of the medal 
to the captors of Major Andre, all of those men- 
tioned were executed by the great French en- 
gravers, mostly after designs and with inscriptions 
furnished by a committee of the Academy of In- 
scriptions and Belles Lettres in Paris. 

Our forefathers evidently did not believe in pro- 
tection to home art, perhaps being of the same 
mind as a great American general, who, in writing 
to the Secretary of War on this subject, said : 
" But 1 beg leave again to suggest that the honor 
of the country requires that medals voted by Con- 
gress should always exhibit the arts involved in 
their highest state of perfection tvherever found ; 
for letters, science and the fine arts constitute but 
one republic embracing the world. 11 General Wash- 
ington seems to have been also imbued with that 
idea, for while at Valley Forge, on finding some 
valuable medical manuscripts- — the property of a 
British medical officer — among some other cap- 
tured property, he directed them to be returned to 
their owner, saying that the Americans did not 
w T ar against the sciences. 



21 



There are six other well-known medals of the 
Revolutionary times, which are of very great his- 
torical importance, but are not national in the 
sense of being ordered by Congress. These are 

13. The Libertas Americana, in honor of the 
surrender at Yorktown. This was ordered by Dr. 
Franklin to be executed by Dupre. It represents 
young America as the infant Hercules strangling 
two serpents. 

14 and 15. Two medals to Dr. Benjamin Frank- 
lin, engraved and dedicated to him by his friend, 
Augustin Dupre, both of which bear Turgot's cele- 
brated Latin verse, composed in his honor : " Eri- 
puit coelo falmen sceptrumque tyrannis " (He 
wrenched the thunderbolt from heaven and the 
sceptre from tyrants). 

16 and 17. Two medals struck in Amsterdam — 
one called "Libera Soror" in honor of the acknow- 
ledgment of the United States by the United 
Netherlands, the other in honor of the celebration 
of the first treaty of amity and commerce between 
those countries. 

18. The so-called Diplomatic medal. It was 
then the custom, and, to a great extent is now, for 
a sovereign to give some token of his regard to a 
retiring ambassador who has been a ■" persona ; 
grata" at his Court, and General Washington and 
his Secretary of State — Mr. Jefferson — evidently 
thought that the United States Government should 



22 



not allow itself to be outdone in generosity and 
splendor by any king of them all, and so ordered 
these medals, each with a gold chain, to cost 
$1,000; but only two have ever been given — one 
to the Chevalier de la Luzerne, Minister of the 
King of France in the United States from 1779 to 
1784, and the other to the Marquis de Moustier, 
likewise French Minister at "Washington from 1787 
to 1790. 

A medal called the Japanese Embassy Medal 
was struck at the Philadelphia Mint on May 17, 
1860, by order of the State Departmant, in honor 
of the arrival of the first diplomatic representatives 
of the Empire of Japan in this country. Three 
gold medals were struck, one for each of the three 
envoys, and copies in silver or copper were given 
to the other members of the Embassy; but this 
must not be confounded with the Diplomatic 
medal, and, strictly speaking, is not a national 
medal. It was simply to commemorate the inter- 
esting fact that for the first time in history, the 
Empire of Japan abandoned its traditional policy 
of Oriental seclusion, and opened regular diplo- 
matic communication with Western civilization. 
Many gentlemen here present will doubtless re- 
call the visit of these ambassadors to Balti- 
more on the 8th June, 1860, where, as guests of 
the Government of the United States, they were 
formally received by the Mayor and City Council, 



23 



and their swords were stolen from the Gilmor 
House. A peculiar and much-criticized incident 
in that connection was that the police authorities 
advertised, offering a large reward — I believe 
$1,000 — for the recovery of these swords, promis- 
ing to the thieves immunity from all criminal 
prosecution on the return of the stolen property. 
This was done on the belief that the loss of the 
swords would subject the envoys to the penalty of 
death on their return to Japan. 

19. The first medal given by Congress after the 
Revolution was to Captain Thomas Truxton, com- 
mander of the United States frigate Constellation, 
which was built at Harris Creek, Baltimore, for 
the capture of the French ship of war La Ven- 
geance, near the island of Guadaloupe, on the 1st 
February, 1800. This was at the time of the 
unfortunate complication with France, which has 
left us, among other disagreeable reminiscences, 
the famous French spoliation claims. 

President John Adams, in writing to Captain 
Truxton in regard to this medal, expressed some 
views about the navy which do not seem to have 
been in accord with the policy of our Government 
for the last twenty years. He says: "The counsels 
which Themistocles gave to Athens, Pompey to 
Rome, Cromwell to England, De Witt to Holland 
and Colbert to France, I have always given, and 
shall continue to give, to my countrymen — that as 



24 



the great questions of commerce and power between 
nations and empires must be decided by a military 
marine, and war and peace are decided at sea, all 
reasonable encouragement should be given to the 
navy. The trident of Neptune is the sceptre of 
the world." 

20. The next medal was granted March 3, 1805, 
to Commodore Edward Preble, of the navy, for the 
gallant action before Tripoli in 1804. We find in 
the official report high commendation given to a 
lieutenant with the Maryland name of Trippe, who 
commanded one of the boats and was severely 
wounded in that action. 

21-42. Some reference should now be made to 
the medals which are called by the United States 
Mint Presidential Medals. Of these there are 
twenty-two — two for General Washington and one 
for each of the succeeding Presidents except Gen- 
eral William Henry Harrison, who died one 
month after his inauguration. 

In 1786 Mr. Kean, member of Congress from 
South Carolina, moved that medals be struck for 
presentation to the Indian chiefs with whom the 
United States should conclude treaties. 

The first medal so struck was given to Red 
Jacket, the great chief of the Six Nations, on his 
visit to Philadelphia in 1792. It bore on its face 
the figure of General Washington, with the legend, 
George Washington, President, 1792, and all sub- 



25 



sequent Indian medals have, following this prece- 
dent, borne the engraved portrait of the President 
who approved of the treaty, with the date of his 
administration, thus making a most valuable 
and interesting addition to our national historical 
medals. 

More medals were granted during the war of 
1812 than at any other period of our history. 

The first three were voted January 29, 1813: 

43. To Captain Isaac Hull, of the United States 
frigate Constitution, for the capture of the British 
frigate Guerriere. 

44. To Captain Stephen Decatur, of the frigate 
United States, for the capture of the British frigate 
Macedonian, and 

45. To Captain Jacob Jones, of the United States 
sloop of Avar Wasp, for the capture of the British 
sloop of war Frolic. 

Silver medals, copies of the golden ones voted to 
these captains, were directed by Congress to be 
given to the nearest male relatives of Lieutenants 
Bush and Funk, killed in these actions. 

The gallant Captain Decatur was born in Syne- 
puxent, Worcester County, Maryland, and Captain 
Hull, in his report, highly recommends Lieutenant 
Contee, of the Marines, for coolness and gallantry. 

Next come the medals of 

46. Captain Bainbridge, for the capture of the 
Java, December 29, 1812. 



26 



47. Lieutenant McCall, for the capture of the 
Boxer, September 4, 1813, and 

48. Lieutenant William Burrows, for the same 
action. He was in command of the United States 
brig of war Enterprise, was killed in the action 
and was succeeded in command by Lieutenant 
McCall. His medal was, therefore, voted by Con- 
gress to his nearest male relative. 

49. The famous victory of Captain Oliver Hazard 
Perry on Lake Erie added two medals — one to 
Perry himself and the other to the second in 
command 

50. Captain Jesse Duncan Elliott, of Maryland, 
who was thirty-one years old at the date of that 
action, but, young as he was, had already made his 
mark by cutting out two British ships from under 
Fort Erie, for which Congress had voted him a 
sword of honor. Commodore Perry's old battle 
flag, with the legend " Don't give up the ship," is 
still preserved at the Naval School at Annapolis. 

The victory of Lake Champlain was rewarded by 
three medals — one to 

51. Captain Thomas McDonogh, one to 

52. Captain Robert Henley, and one to 

53. Lieutenant Stephen Cassin. 
Then followed the medals of 

54. Captain Lewis Warrington, of the sloop of 
war Peacock, for the capture of the British brig 
Epervier, April 29, 1814, and of 



27 



55. Captain Johnson Blakeley, of the sloop of 
war Peacock, for the capture of the British sloop 
of war Reindeer, July 8, 1814. 

56. The medals of Captain Charles Stewart, of 
the United States frigate Constitution, for the 
capture of the British frigate Cyane, and of 

57. Captain James Biddle, of the United States 
sloop of war Hornet, for the capture of the British 
sloop of war Penguin, complete the list of naval 
medals granted during the war of 1812. 

Captain Charles Stewart was the maternal grand- 
father of the present famous Irish patriot, Charles 
Stewart Parnell. 

During the same war the actions of Chippewa, 
Niagara and Erie, in Upper Canada, were rewarded 
by medals to 

58. Major-General Jacob Brown. 

59. Major-General Peter Buel Porter. 

60. Brigadier-General Eleazar Wheelock Ripley. 

61. Brio-adier-General James Miller. 

62. Major-General Winfield Scott. 

63. Major-General Edmund Pendleton Gaines, 
and the victory of Plattsburgh, by the medal of 

64. Major-General Alexander Macomb. 

In the official reports of these battles special 
mention is made of Captain Towson's artillery. I 
suppose that he is the same gallant officer whose 
fame has been immortalized by the naming of the 
capital of a neighboring county. 



28 



The next of the army medals of the war was 
granted for the battle of New Orleans, January 8, 
1815, to 

65. Major-General Andrew Jackson, " Old Hick- 
ory " — " a great democratic victory." 

And Congress in 1818 voted medals to 

66. Major-General William Henry Jackson, and 

67. Isaac Shelby, a Governor of Kentucky, for 
the battle of the Thames, in Upper Canada, October 
5, 1813. 

General Harrison was, as has been already 
stated, the only President of the United States for 
whom no Presidential Medal was struck. 

Governor Shelby was born in Hagerstown, 
Maryland, September 14, 1750. He distinguished 
himself in the Southern battles in the Revolution- 
ary war, and was voted a sword of honor with the 
thanks of the Legislature of North Carolina. He 
was Governor of Kentucky from 1812 to 1816, and 
joined General Harrison at the head of 4,000 Ken- 
tucky volunteers and rendered gallant service at 
the battle of the Thames. He declined to be Secre- 
tary of War in 1817 and died in Kentucky, July 
18, 1826. 

The last medal for this war was not voted until 
February 13, 1835. It was to 

68. Colonel George Croghan, for the defense of 
Fort Stephenson, August 3, 1813. 

Congress does not seem to have found it neces- 



29 



sary to commemorate the battle of Bladensburgh 
by the granting of a medal to any of the partici- 
pants in that brilliant strategic movement. 

69. From the end of the war of 1812-15 to the 
time of the Mexican war, no medals were voted by 
Congress, as the war with the Florida Indians did 
not apparently call for any such especial honor ; 
but during this period a medal was struck in 
France in honor of the treaty of commerce con- 
cluded with that country. June 24, 1822. This is 
in no sense an official medal, but Mr. Loubat clas- 
sifies it as national by reason of its great historic 
interest. 

70, 71, 72. During the Mexican war Major- 
General Zachary Taylor received no less than 
three medals, with the corresponding vote of 
thanks of the Congress — one July 16, 1846, for the 
battles of Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma ; one 
March 2, 1847, for Monterey; one May 9. 1848, 
for Buena Yista, and 

73, General Scott, the hero of 1812, received his 
second medal for the actions of Vera Cruz, Cerro 
Gordo, Contreras, Churubusco, Molino del Rev and 
Chapultepec. 

All through the reports of these actions we find 
honorable mention of the Maryland names of Wat- 
son, Ringgold, May, Ramsey, Randolph Ridgely, 
and others of the gallant sons of this old State. 

On the 10th December, 1846, the United States 



30 



brig Somers, one of the squadron blockading Vera 
Cruz under the command of Captain Raphael 
Semmes, was struck by a sudden squall, and sunk 
within ten minutes from the time the squall struck 
her. The British, French and Spanish men-of-war, 
who witnessed the disaster, immediately lowered 
boats manned by brave men, who, at the peril of 
their own lives, in a rao-insr sea, rescued all but two 
officers and forty men. 

74. Congress passed an act, March 3, 1847, 
directing that a suitable medal be struck and pre- 
sented to the officers and men of these various 
foreign vessels, in recognition of their gallant and 
humane conduct. 

75. The Martin Costa incident in the harbor of 
Smyrna, July 3, 1853, resulted in the voting of a 
medal to Commander Duncan 1ST. Ingraham, of the 
United States ship St. Louis. This gallant officer, 
evidently a firm believer in "a vigorous foreign 
policy," was informed that Martin Costa, a citizen 
of the United States, had been claimed as an 
Austrian subject, was taken as a prisoner and con- 
fined on board the Austrian brig Hussar. After 
polite request for his surrender and a refusal 
from the Austrians, Capt. Ingraham shotted his 
guns, anchored within half a cable's length of the 
brig, which had been by this time reinforced by a 
ten-gun schooner and three Austrian mail steam- 
ers, and sent the following note : 



31 



" To the Commander of the Austrian brig Hussar: 

" Sir, — I have been directed by the American charge at 
Constantinople to demand the person of Martin Costa, a 
citizen of the United States taken by force from Turkish soil 
and now confined on board the brig Hussar, and if a refusal 
is given, to take him by force. 

An answer to the demand must be returned by 4 p. m. 
" Very respectfully, 

" Your obedient servant, 

" D. N. Ixg-eaham, Commander." 

Costa was then surrendered and sent on shore to 
the custody of the French consul. 

76. A medal was voted on May 11, 1858, to Sur- 
geon Frederick Henry Rose, of the British navy, 
for volunteering to act as medical officer of the 
United States ship Susquehanna, nearly all of 
whose crew were disabled and dying from yellow 
fever, and on July 26, 1866, a medal was voted to 

77. Captains Creighton, Low and Stouffer, for 
saving the ship's company of the wrecked steamer 
San Francisco, with the Third United States Artil- 
lery on board, in December, 1853. 

78. With a magnanimity and true patriotic feel- 
ing which does honor to the American character, 
the Congress gave no medal commemorating the 
battles of the great civil w T ar except the one given 
to Major-General U. S. Grant by the act of Decem- 
ber, 1863, for the victories of Fort Donelson, Yicks- 
buro- and Chattanooga. 



32 



79. On the 28th January, 1864, a medal was 
also voted to "Commodore" Cornelius Vanderbilt, 
in recognition of his free gift to the Government of 
the steamer which bore his name and which was 
valued at $1,000,000. It w T as provided in the act 
that a copy of this medal should be placed in the 
Congressional Library. In his letter accepting the 
medal, he gives the following good advice to his 
descendants: u And it is my hope that those who 
come after me, as they read the inscription of the 
medal and are reminded of the event in their 
father's life which caused it to be struck, will 
inflexibly resolve that, should our Government be 
again imperilled, no pecuniary sacrifice is too large 
to make in its behalf, and no inducement suffici- 
ently great to attempt to profit by its necessities.' , 

80. On the 1st March, 1871, Congress voted to 
George Foster Robinson, late a private of Maine 
Volunteers, $5,000 in money and a gold medal in 
recognition of his heroic conduct in saving the life 
of Mr. Seward from the attack of Payne, the 
accomplice of John Wilkes Booth, on April 14, 
1865; but it seems unfortunate that this gentleman 
could not have been suitably rewarded in some 
other way than by a perpetual record of an act 
which Americans of all political creeds can now 
only remember with shame and sorrow. 

These three medals are the only ones in any wise 
connected with that unfortunate war period. 



33 



81. On March 2, 1867, Congress voted a medal 
to Mr. Cyrus West Field, of New York, "for his 
foresight, courage and determination in establish- 
ing telegraphic communication by means of the 
Atlantic cable traversing mid-ocean and connecting 
the Old World with the New." 

Mr. Field founded the New York, Newfoundland 
and London Telegraph Company in 1854. organized 
the Atlantic Telegraph Company in 1856, and was 
the active mover in that great project until its 
final real success in 1867. "Peace has its victories 
as well as war," and this was assuredly one of the 
greatest, 

82. On the 16th March, 1867, a medal was voted 
to George Peabody, '■ for his great and peculiar 
beneficence in giving a large sum of money. 
amounting to $2,000,000, for promotion of educa- 
tion in the more destitute portions of the Southern 
and Southwestern States." 

Before a Baltimore audience it would be super- 
fluous to make any eulogy upon the character and 
good deeds of that great philanthropist. 

It may be of interest, however, to give an extract 
from his letter to Mr. W. H. Seward, Secretary of 
State, acknowledging the receipt of the medal : 

"Cherishing, as I do, the warmest affection for mv country, 
it is not possible for me to feel more grateful than I do for 
this precious memorial of its regard, coming, as it does, from 
thirty millions of American citizens through their representa- 



34 



lives in Congress, with the full accord and cooperation of the 
President. 

" The medal, together with the rich illuminated transcript 
of the Congressional resolution, I shall shortly deposit at the 
Peabody Institution, at the place of my birth, in apartments 
specially constructed for their safe keeping, along with other 
public testimonials with which I have been honored. There, 
I trust, it will remain for generations, to attest the generous 
munificence of the American people in recognizing the efforts, 
however inadequate, of one of the humblest of their fellow- 
countrymen to promote the enlightenment and prosperity of 
his native land." 

This feeling acknowledgment by this great and 
good man of the honor conferred upon him be- 
comes all the more striking when we recall the fact 
that he respectfully declined a baronetcy and the 
Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath, tendered 
him by Queen Victoria in recognition of his munifi- 
cent charity to the London poor. 

83. The loss of the steamer Metis, 31st August, 
1872, was commemorated by a medal granted to 
the crews of a lifeboat and fishing-boat, who saved 
the lives of thirty-two persons from the wreck. 

84. John Horn, Jr., of Detroit, by vote of June 
20, 1874, received a medal in recognition of his 
extraordinaiy record of having, at different times, 
saved the lives of more than 100 persons from 
drowning. 

85. 86. Congress, by the act of June 16, 1874, 



35 



authorized the striking of medals in commemora- 
tion of the Centennial celebration at Philadelphia 
in 1876, and two were struck at the expense of the 
Centennial Board of Finance for sale and distri- 
bution. 

We come now to a class of medals distinctly 
national in their character, but so multiplied in 
number that it is impossible here to do more than 
refer to them. 

87, 88. On the same day, June 20, 1874, that the 
medal was voted to John Horn, Jr., Congress 
passed the following act : 

"Resolved, That the Secretary of the Treasury is hereby 
directed to cause to be prepared medals of honor with suitable 
devices, to be distinguished as life-saving medals of the first 
and second class, which shall be bestowed upon any persons 
who shall hereafter endanger their own lives in saving lives 
from perils of the sea ? within the United States or upon any 
American vessels. 

"Provided, That the medal of the first class shall be con- 
fined to cases of extreme and heroic daring, and that the 
medal of the second class shall be given to cases not suffi- 
ciently distinguished to deserve the medals of the first class. 

"Provided, That no award of either medal shall be made to 
any person until sufficient evidence of his deserving shall be 
filed with the Secretary of the Treasury and entered upon the 
records of the Department." 

Many brave men have earned and received this 
medal since the passage of this act. 



36 



It is a fact scarcely known outside of the army 
and navy that our Government gives a medal or 
decoration exactly equivalent to the Iron Cross of 
Germany, the Victoria Cross of England or the 
Legion of Honor of France for distinguished mili- 
tary valor, and it is a singular and remarkable 
tribute to the modesty of the recipients that the 
country at large has heard so little on the subject. 

The necessity and fitness of such rewards for 
valor has been recognized by all nations, and 
no reward is more highly esteemed by military 
men than a personal decoration for distinguished 
bravery. 

General Washington by a general order at 
Newburg, August 7, 1782, provided, that for any 
singularly meritorious action reported by a board 
of officers, men should have their names enrolled 
in the book of merit, and should wear a heart in 
purple cloth or silk, edged with narrow lace or 
binding, and when so decorated should be per- 
mitted to pass all guards and sentinels which 
officers are permitted to do. 

During the Mexican war officers were rewarded 
by brevets, and deserving privates by certificates 
of merit and $2 additional monthly pay. 

89. But during the Civil war these makeshifts 
were abandoned, and the Acts of July 12, 1862, 
and March 3, 1863, provided that medals of honor 
should be given to such officers, non-commissioned 



officers and privates who have most distinguished 
or may hereafter most distinguish themselves by 
gallantry in action. Up to the end of the war in 
1865, 330 of these medals had been given and some 
300 more have been given since that time. 

90. The acts of December 21, 1861, and July 16, 
1862, made similar provisions for the navy, but 
excluded commissioned officers. 

The writer was informed by a distinguished 
naval officer that 338 of these medals were given 
during the war and 113 since. 

This concludes the list of National Medals prop- 
erly so-called ; but there is another one that ought 
to be in existence, voted as far back as 1857 to the 
celebrated Arctic explorer, Dr. Elisha Kent Kane. 
This distinguished naval officer died at the early 
ao-e of thirtv-seven vears, and it was onlv after his 
death that the medal was voted. 

The Superintendent of the Mint in a letter under 
date March 5, 1887, says, " The Dr. E. K. Kane 
Medal was not struck at the Mint, but I am 
informed that it was manufactured in New York." 
The writer has not as yet, however, been able to 
obtain any reliable information about it. 

A laro-e number of other medals have been 
struck at the Mint. Some of them by order of 
State Legislatures, called sub-national medals ; 
some of them for private individuals. Many of 
these are of jn*eat historical interest, but not beinc: 
6 



38 



national in tlie sense of being voted by Congress, 
they do not come within the scope of this paper. 1 

But there is a class of medals, badges or orders 
growing out of our various wars which should be 
briefly mentioned. The oldest of these is the 
Order of the Cincinnati. 

This society was formed by the officers of the 
Revolutionary army at the cantonments in New- 
burg on the Hudson in May, 1773. The original 
institution adopted at that time thus describes the 
purpose of its formation : 

" To perpetuate therefore as well the remembrance of this 
vast event (the Revolution) as the mutual friendships which 
have been formed under the pressure of common clanger and 
in many instances cemented by the blood of the parties, the 
officers of the American army do hereby in the most solemn 
manner associate, constitute and combine themselves into one 
society of friends, to endure as long as they shall endure or 
any of their eldest male posterity ; and in failure thereof the 
collateral branches who may be judged worthy of becoming 
its supporters and members." 

1 Congress lias in various instances, in granting a gold medal to successful 
commanders, ordered that a silver medal should be given to each of the 
subordinate commissioned officers engaged in the action. But as these sil- 
ver medals are simply copies of the ones in gold given to the commanding 
officers, they are not here separately enumerated, all being of the same 
design, and therefore to be considered as but one medal, exactly as the 
numerous life saving and Army and Navy Medals of honor are all repro'r 
ductions of one original. 

In the cases of Colonel John Stewart and Colonel de Fleury, subordinate 
officers at Stony Point, the resolution of Congress thanked them by name, 
and two distinct medals were struck, one by Duvivier and the other by 
Gatteaux, each having its separate and original design, and neither bearing 
any resemblance to the gold medal of Gen. Wayne. 



39 



The principles which are declared to be immu- 
table are: to inculcate to the latest ages the duty 
of laying down in peace arms assumed for the 
public defence in war ; to perpetuate the mutual 
friendships commenced under the pressure of 
common clanger ; and to effectuate the acts of 
benevolence dictated by the spirit of brotherly 
kindness towards those officers and their families 
who unfortunately may be under the necessity of 
receiving them. 

The society declared to be eligible all 'commis- 
sioned officers of the army and navy of the United 
States who left the service with reputation, and 
foreign officers not lower in rank than colonels or 
captains in the navy ranking as colonels. The 
original membership was about 2,000, with Gen- 
eral Washington as President as long as he lived ; 
the present membership is however not over 500. 
The Hon. Hamilton Fish is the present President- 
General, and the Hon. Robert M. McLane Presi- 
dent of the Maryland State branch. 

The bald eagle carrying the emblems on his 
breast was chosen as the insignia of the order, 
and the medal was made in Paris by M. Duval, 
after designs prepared by Major L'Enfant. Dr. 
Franklin who was later elected an honorary mem- 
ber of the society for life did not approve of this 
selection for the following reasons, expressed in a 
letter to one of his family : 



40 



"For- my own part I wish the bald eagle had not been 
chosen as the representative of our coimtry ; he is a bird of 
bad moral character, he does not get his living honestly. 
You may have seen him perched on some dead tree where, 
too lazy to fish for himself, he watches the labor of the fishing- 
hawk, and when that diligent bird has at length taken a fish 
and is bearing it to his nest for the support of his mate and 
young ones, the bald eagle pursues him and takes it from 
him. With all this injustice he is never in good case, but 
like those among men who live by sharping and robbing, he 
is generally poor and often very lousy. Besides he is a rank 
coward ; the little king bird, not bigger than a sparrow, 
attacks him boldly and drives him out of the district. He 
is, therefore, by no means a proper emblem for the brave and 
honest Cincinnati, who have driven all the king birds from 
our country, tho' exactly fit for that order of knights which 
the French call Chevaliers d'Industrie." 

The medal is, however, a very handsome piece, 
and was the only foreign order allowed to be worn 
by French officers at the French Court. Many 
members settled on the land granted to them in 
the West for their services in the war, and General 
St. Clair and Colonel Sargent, two original mem- 
bers, named their three pioneer log-cabins, at the 
junction of the Licking and the Ohio, after their 
society, and so gave it a flourishing godchild in the 
city of Cincinnati. 

The civil war produced the military order of the 
Loval Legion, which is, I am informed, founded on 
exactly the principles of the Cincinnati, including 



41 



the hereditary feature which has been so much 
criticized. It is confined to commissioned officers 
and numbers over 5,000. General Sheridan is the 
present Commander, succeeding the late General 
Hancock. Their medal also represents the bald 
eagle on a six-pointed star. 

The Grand Army of the Republic, also an out- 
come of the civil war, is intended to be a charitable 
organization for officers and men. They are very 
important in numbers and have a handsome bronze 
badge. 

- The Mexican war originated the Aztec Club and 
the Association of the Mexican Veterans, and I 
understand that a badge has been adopted called 
the Order of the Cacti; but this I have never seen, 
nor any description of it. 

But none of these can be considered as national 
medals, inasmuch as none of them have ever 
received any direct Governmental recognition. 
Congress, however, by the act of July 25, 1868, 
authorized the wearing of army corps badges on 
occasions of ceremony. 

The really national medals may, therefore, prop- 
erly be limited to the eighty-three already enu- 
merated 1 granted by order of Congress, and, extra- 
ordinary as it may seem, there does not exist in 



1 Unless the historical importance of numbers 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18 and 
69 gives them the national character which they lack by reason of not 
having the sanction of a Congressional resolution. 



42 



any public department of our Government — not 
even in the Mint itself — any complete collection of 
them. 

In 1855 the Mint was authorized to strike copies 
for sale, and it was then discovered that nearly all 
those of the Revolutionary epoch were missing. 
Most of these were, however, obtained from Paris 
by the courtesy of the French Government, which, 
more zealous than our own authorities, had pre- 
served them, and new dies were struck at our 
Mint. 

There are, however, three not yet at the Mint — 
those of General Wayne, Lieutenant-Colonel Stew- 
art and Major-General Nathaniel Greene ; but, 
after a three years' search, authentic copies have 
been procured and are now the property of Mr. T. 
Harrison Garrett, of this city — a member of this 
society. 

The city of Baltimore earned the name of the 
Monumental City because of her taking the initia- 
tive in honoring the memory of Washington by 
the beautiful marble shaft which is to-day one of 
her greatest ornaments, and the erection of other 
historic memorials, and it would seem to be especi- 
ally fitting that from the city of Baltimore should 
begin the action which will cause these medals to 
be properly preserved and placed on record in all 
the public departments, and in every State and 
Territory in the Union. 



43 



The larger projects of Dr. Franklin, Thomas 
Jefferson and John Jay, already mentioned in this 
paper, did not, it is true, meet with the approval of 
Congress so far as we know ; but the modified 
scheme embodied in the joint resolution prepared 
by your committee and already read to you, if it 
fails now, can be tried again in the next Congress. 

For these are the heirlooms of the Republic. 
They were given by a grateful country "in per- 
petuam rei memoriam" and they record men and 
things which this people must not allow to pass 
into oblivion. 

Here in these fourscore little pieces of metal is 
an epitome of the history of the United States. 
Her victories in war and in peace, the achieve- 
ments of her sons in the arts and sciences, and the 
munificence and patriotism of her citizens in the 
hour of their country's need all are recorded here. 

And although they may be but the dry bones of 
history, they are the visible material object lessons 
which every American child, learning his country's 
history should be familiar with. 

And when some Dr. Schliemann of the future in 
taking an archaeological tour in company with 
Macaulay's New Zealander, may commence his 
excavations on the site of the ruined capital of 
some State to-day the newest of western territories, 
he shall exhume, stamped on imperishable metal, 
in this collection of national medals, the historv of 



44 



the United States. He will not know the fact, nor 
perhaps will we, but none the less its existence 
there will be clue to the efforts of the Maryland 
Historical Societ} r , if it succeeds in accomplishing 
even partially the work that was left unfinished 
by Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and 
John Jay. 



APPENDIX 



At the regular meeting of the Maryland Historical Society in 
April, 1885, the attention of the Society was called to the fact that 
no complete collection of the National Medals voted by Congress 
was known to exist in any of the departments of the government, 
although a number of them were preserved in some form at the 
United States Mint in Philadelphia. 

Considering that in the interest of education and for historical 
reference the preservation and publication of these medals is an 
important national matter, the Society then passed a resolution 
constituting a committee for the purpose of investigating the 
subject and taking such steps as they might deem proper to bring 
it to the notice of the general government. 

This committee was composed of Messrs. T. Harrison Garrett, 
Lennox Birckhead, and Richard M. McSherry, the latter being 
the chairman. 

After some correspondence with the officials at the Mint, the 
committee concluded that the first practical step was to obtain 
the originals or authentic copies of those medals which are not 
and never have been at the Mint. 

These are but four in number, namely, those of General Wayne, 
Colonel Stewart, and General Greene, all originally struck in 
France, and that of Doctor Elisha Kent Kane, which has never 
been struck at all, so far as the committee can discover. 

7 45 



46 



After a two years' search, involving much correspondence, one 
of the committee got intelligence of the existence of authentic 
copies of the Wayne, Stewart and Greene medals, and these copies 
are now in Baltimore, the property of another member of the 
committee, Mr. Garrett. 

Immediately after procuring these copies the committee pre- 
pared the following resolution, which was offered in the House 
of Representatives January 30, 1887, by the Hon. Jno. V. L. 
Findlay. 

Joint Resolution authorizing and requiring the Secretary of 
the Treasury to have struck copies of certain medals and to 
deliver the same to certain departments and to the various 
States and Territories. 

Whereas, at various times by order of the Congress of the 
United States, National Medals have been issued in commemora- 
tion of great national events, deeds of valor of our naval and 
military heroes, important public services by citizens and the 
administration of our Presidents. 

And whereas, it is believed that no complete set of these medals 
is in the possession of the United States Government in the Mint 
or elsewhere. 

And whereas, in the interest of education and for historical 
reference their careful preservation in some form accessible to 
all citizens is most important as exact memorials of events and 
personages notable in our national history and to be remembered 
with patriotic pride. 

Now therefore be it resolved by the Senate and House of Repre- 
sentatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, 

That the Secretary of the Treasury be and is hereby required 
to have struck off at the United States Mint complete sets of all 
the National Medals of the classes above named. 

And in case a die or copy of any of such medals is not in the 
possession of the Mint, then the Secretary of the Treasury is 



47 



hereby required to procure the original medal or an authentic 
copy thereof, and to prepare a new die making an exact repro- 
duction of the original. 

And the Secretary of the Treasury is hereby authorized and 
required to distribute these complete sets when made as follows : 

One set in the original metal as first issued to all the executive 
departments of the United States Government at Washington. 

One set in bronze to each of the States of the Union and the 
Territories, to be by them preserved accessible to the public in 
such form as the various Legislatures may prescribe. 

And the cost of dies, material and distribution shall be defrayed 
by the United States Mint at Philadelphia out of its contingent 
fund. 

This resolution was submitted to the Director of the Mint who 
approved of it, and was referred to the committee on coinage, 
weights and measures, and the only member of that committee 
who was referred to on the subject expressed himself as strongly 
in favor of it. 

Time, however, did not allow the resolution to be reported by 
the committee on coinage, &c, and voted on by Congress, but 
there was no reason to apprehend any opposition to the measure, 
especially as the Director of the Mint estimated that the expense 
would be very small and could be defrayed by the Mint out of 
its contingent fund. 

It is the intention of the committee to have the resolution again 
presented in the next Congress. And the object of the chairman 
of the committee in preparing this paper was to put clearly before 
the Society the purpose and scope of the resolution, and to set 
forth what seems to him its great historical and educational im- 
portance, in the hope that every person who reads the paper may 
lend his influence and assistance towards the accomplishment of 
so worthy a project. 



LIBRPRY OF CONGRESS 



027 211 009 8 



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